


Scraps of Silk

by Tavina



Series: Silk and Steel [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Backstory, Chinese Cultural Fusion, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Less Food Items, Local Disenfranchised Woman and Friends (And Family), More sad, Nobility, POV Outsider, Politics, Silkverse Side Stories, Warring States Period (Naruto), author still regrets nothing, class struggles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:16:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27388582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tavina/pseuds/Tavina
Summary: The other side of the curtain.[POVs and scenes that didn't make it into 'A Bolt of Silk']
Relationships: Kawaguchi Hisa/Uchiha Izuna, OFC/Uchiha Izuna, Original Character(s) - Relationship
Series: Silk and Steel [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2000788
Comments: 26
Kudos: 193





	1. The Hands of the Guzheng Player

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by Petrames, drowsyivy and UmbreonGurl
> 
> Also known as: How did Hiko end up at the estate?

“There is nothing you can see

That is not a flower.

There is nothing you can think

That is not the moon.”

— Matsuo Basho

* * *

_Your father is an important man, Hiko-kun._ He holds onto this when he has nothing else, when he is alone and friendless, driven from place to place by men larger than he who begged at better places than he could. _And one day he will come for us. You’ll see._

One day he will come for us.

But there is no longer any ‘us’ to speak of.

“Now see here, you little rat.” A large hand descends on the back of his collar, hauling him away from the wagon he’d reached up into.

“I just want to eat!” No meals for days now, not even the older sisters at the house would give him anything anymore, having been caught by the madam, and now their food is rationed, to prevent the house from ‘raising unwanted strays’.

Never mind that Haha-ue had worked at the house. Never mind that he had lived there.

“That’s what they all say.” The hand turns him around to face a broad shouldered middle aged man. “Do you think we all don’t need to eat?”

“You can afford it!” He kicks his feet, wondering when the merchant will let go of him. “You’ve got so much money!”

He’d only tried because he was hungry.

He is hungry, and surely, _surely,_ there is food to spare here, among people who look so wealthy and have so much.

The man shakes him back and forth, rattling him like a beaten dog. “If only we could say the same of every street rat.”

“Let me go! Let me go!” If he makes enough of a ruckus, surely someone will hear him.

_No one will hear me. I’ll die here like this, all alone in the world, forgotten._

_The madam was right. I’ll never be anything or any—_

“Toshi?” Another man climbs out of the carriage, dressed in brown silks of much richer variety than the man who’d been shaking him. “What’s the matter?”

The man — Toshi — straightens himself out, before bobbing a quick bow to the man that had just appeared. “Just sorting out a little thief, Yasu.”

Yasu-san turns to him, a contemplative look in ink dark eyes.

It is twilight upon the world now; surely, the magistrate’s office is closed.

But with the new dawn rising…

He knows that there is only one path now that he’s been caught stealing.

Who would believe the protests of a gutter boy?

Who would be the one to plead his case?

 _Please sir, I am starving,_ is never enough.

Those dark eyes soften. “Let him go, Toshi. It’s only a boy.” The merchant — and surely, this must be the merchant who has so much — turns away. “What does he know of these things?”

Toshi sniffs but sets him on the ground. “No sense of morals in this one.” The hand on his collar remains however.

That isn’t the same as letting him _go,_ but small mercies, small mercies if the merchant will not drag him off to the magistrate immediately.

There is still time to escape during the night.

The merchant sighs, turns back to them. “Toshi, _look at him_.” He holds up a hand to forestall more argument. “No, really, _look_ at him.”

He is suddenly aware of being more ragged and miserable than he was just a moment ago, shoes falling apart on his feet, the grime and filth, his knotted hair and hunger.

“Let him go,” the merchant says again, softer this time. “Someone has loved him, and they are no longer of this world. Let the sleeping ghosts lie.”

_One day, he will come for you. You’ll see._

The hand on the back of his collar releases him.

He should run, should get away, careful to make sure that no one can take back this little gift of mercy, but, but—

But.

“How did you know that?” The words are sharper than he intends, but no one has ever loved him, except Haha-ue.

How did this man he has never seen before know that? How did he know she is—

 _Dead,_ his mind finishes for him. _She is dead, and you took care of her last rites._

_They may have kicked you out of the temple when you tried to visit, but you did that at the very least._

The merchant turns to him, hands clasped behind his back, dark eyes almost sad. “She handmade your shoes, didn’t she? Every stitch, every scrap of cloth. The work for a pair of shoes is no hour of idle leisure. What is that if not love?”

“And that she is gone?” Something like a choked sob wails in his throat, but he cannot let it out.

The merchant looks down, almost smiles, though that is not happy either. “Look at the state of your shoes.”

He chokes, not sure if he doesn’t hate the man who has, just with one glance, unveiled all his secrets to the world and shaken them out for all to see.

“She said someone would come for me.”

Did he know that too? This man who sees everything?

“And someone has.” The corners of Yasu-san’s mouth tilts down. “I hope you don’t mind; I seem to be a little late.”

* * *

The merchant, Kawaguchi Yasutaro, is a silk merchant, not a dweller of the capital city he’d been born to and lived in all his life, and yet, he has a residence in the city, larger than any place Hiko has been in before except the house.

He is not the one that Hiko has been waiting for his entire life, but he is the one who has arrived.

It will have to be enough.

In the merchant’s house, there is no cook, but the man named Toshi is sent out to some restaurant that is familiar to both Kawaguchi-san and Toshi, because there’d been merely an exchange of glances, a question of whether or not to order the usual, and a few dishes he’s heard of but never seen added to the list.

He is about to ask Kawaguchi-san something, but there is another man coming in to speak to Kawaguchi-san.

“The bookseller is here.” The man sighs and shakes his head. “Should I go tell him that his services are no longer necessary?”

Something freezes in Kawaguchi-san’s face. It is the sharp catching knife of grief, stabbed through the throat. “No,” Kawaguchi-san shakes his head. “Tell him to come in. It must’ve cost him a pretty ryo to hold those books for me. They’ll see some use either way.”

The small stack of books and scrolls the newest visitor brings in are examined and approved, the bookseller beaming all the while. “And how is the young master, Kawaguchi-san? His studies must be going well.”

Kawaguchi-san is silent for a moment at this, his tea set aside, hands clasped together in his lap. “I thank you for your regard for my son. He had an accident earlier this year. I,” and here, a sigh that reigns in the sadness, “I thank you, because he cannot.”

A light goes out behind the bookseller’s eyes, suddenly aware of how he has misstepped. “My apologies.”

And Hiko wonders, being present for this, what exactly this means.

There is grief here, and loss, and yet, the books had been bought anyway, though he doesn’t doubt that Kawaguchi-san’s son will not be using them any longer.

After the bookseller has gone, bowing and gratitude upon his lips, Toshi returns with food that Kawaguchi-san lays out on a table that he’s invited to sit at.

The merchant watches him, chin resting on clasped hands, gaze almost fond.

It’s the first good meal he’s had in weeks, uncertain what it exactly means.

He eats slowly though, remembering what had happened to the beggars who had received, perhaps, a little too much in terms of alms and had been unable to enjoy it.

There is meat here too, on this table, noodles and steamed buns, vegetables and stewed broth, rice, white and puffy, and so soft without hulls.

And it is rude to eat so fast that his chopsticks clink against the bowl, but what is he if not a beggar, even if Haha-ue had taught him better?

Toshi watches him too, and that makes him flush.

But oddly enough, no one says anything about him, rude or otherwise.

* * *

Kawaguchi-san names a place he has never heard of before as where they are going now, after too large clothing had been found for him, and his hair had been brushed out, the grime removed best as possible from his hands and face.

He keeps his shoes though, though his feet had long outgrown them, the only remnant of the boy he used to be.

When the city rises on the horizon, curved tile roofs and the rushing bend of the river, he doesn’t know entirely what he expected.

It is not as large as where he is from, slightly less busy, but looks more prosperous.

Even though the capital is the front doorstep of the son of heaven, it has its fair share of brothel houses and beggars, children with hollow eyes and thieves.

From the path they have taken so far, with him peering out of Kawaguchi-san’s carriage, looking out at the city even as the sun sets, it is not so bad a place.

Then, maybe he is only looking at surfaces at this moment.

Maybe he is only looking at Kawaguchi-san’s surface too. He does not know what the man intends for him.

“Hiko?”

He turns to the silk merchant, who has his eyes closed, hands clasped in his lap as they sit in the carriage, swaying with the movement of the wooden box they find themselves in.

“Yes, Kawaguchi-san?”

“In matters of the house, my wife’s word is law.”

_Wife._

And he had used such a gentle word for wife too. _Aisai. Beloved wife._

“You will be in her care for a time, until she thinks of a place that would best suit you.”

So he is to be a servant then, his contract sold to the household of Kawaguchi.

It is better than what he would have before.

“This one—”

“I.” The correction is gentle, but a river current runs under it, hard as iron shackles. “You are not a lesser human being. We are all men in this world. There is no need for self abasement.”

“I’m thankful.” He settles for this instead, a lump in his throat as he stares at his hands.

* * *

"And who is this, danna?" The woman who appears from the room beyond the door is well dressed, with a face that's lit like a lantern and tearstained eyes as though she had not bothered to hide that she'd been crying.

Behind him, Kawaguchi-san sighs. “He had nowhere else to go, so I thought he could stay with us for a time.”

"Hiko." He turns his face up to her, this new and unfamiliar big madam of the household he is now to stay in and wonders how quickly her kind visage will turn cruel when she learns of his shortcomings. Behind him, the master of the house says nothing more. “Hikotori.”

"Oh?" she takes his face in her hands, bending so that they are eye to eye. "So thin..." she muses. "I will have to ask Kuma to feed you more. Boys ought to remember that they’re growing." She smiles, and it is like the sun appearing from behind the clouds. "I've forgotten to introduce myself haven't I? My name is Maki."

The master of the house is already Kawaguchi-san, and he does not know this woman’s maiden name. “I promise to work very hard, Big Madam.”

Surely, she could be no worse than the madam who ran the house and held that position over the heads of every big sister who worked there, selling their bodies in the hopes that it would bring in a little money to send their families.

“Mmm,” she turns his face slightly, amused smile at odds with her tearstained face. “I have no doubt that you can, although I sincerely doubt that such is the reason my danna brought you home to me.”

Behind him, Kawaguchi turns away, hiding a slight cough behind his hand. “Byakko,” it is such a little word for it to hold so much reverence, almost placatory, a man before a maneater.

The legendary white tiger of the west.

Maki-san smiles, blue eyes alight with an energy that could not exactly be called ladylike, showing a little too much teeth. “Kitsune-san,” she says, no louder than a whisper, a voice more frigid than the north wind. “I think you and I must have a little talk tonight.”

To this, all Kawaguchi-san does is laugh, not a word spoken, not a shred of fear.

He begins to wonder what sort of household he has come to.

* * *

He learns that the young master of the house died just a few months ago, in the start of spring when the plum flowers were blooming from the little girl who is the second miss’s handmaid. His name had been Kawaguchi Jisuke.

He’d been eleven years old, very bright,

He had...if not expected such a fact, did not expect it to be stated so plainly.

“Anyway,” the girl says, as if that is enough segue from the matter. “You are a member of our family now, so I suppose it is nothing strange to tell you this.” She swings her feet back and forth, pastel green skirt fluttering as she does so, tiny black shoes peeking out from beneath the edges of the voluminous cloth. “Say, do you like poetry?”

“Poetry?” The patrons of the house would often show off their word skills if they claimed to be scholars.

But it’s been years since he lived in the house.

“Jisuke-kun was fond of writing poems,” Kimei says, before bursting into tears, covering her face with her hands. “I miss him.”

“Was he nice?” Everyone had something to say about the former young master, it would seem. He was the only son of Kawaguchi-san to live past a month old; if he had not died, he would’ve grown up to be a famous scholar; he’d been a handsome boy.

But very little had been said about Kawaguchi Jisuke’s personality.

“He was very nice.” Kimei sniffs, angrily rubbing at her eyes. “It isn’t fair.”

Very little about life is.

He catches her wrist. Her eyes are already red and puffy, but at least this way she won’t be able to irritate them further. “Life isn’t very fair,” he says, though this isn’t the right thing to say either. “But I’m sorry he’s dead.”

If he had to give a reason for why Kawaguchi-san brought him home like some sort of present to the big madam of the household, he would say very simply: Kawaguchi-san missed his own son terribly, and wished that Hiko could somehow be that son.

He is at a loss to explain why that would never be so.

Someone would come for him, indeed.

* * *

Another two years later, in Yanai, in an inhospitable estate ruled by a cruel man, the letter arrives from Shunan, written in Kawaguchi-san’s hand.

Hiwara Maki is dead.

Without goodbyes said, without warning, without some last heroic act, or loving gesture.

She’d been healthy when they left, standing in the doorway, waving at them as they looked back, one of his arms wrapped around Hisa, the other around Kimei-chan.

But had there been a shadow on her face even back then?

Had she looked into the future and seen how the sickness that riddled the household, affecting her youngest brother-in-law would go on to infect her?

She could not have, or she would’ve said something more.

She is gone.

She will not return.

No final word, no last moments, no wake to sit for her, no funeral parade to walk.

Just the turning of another page in the book of life.

Her number had come up.

The King of Hell had beckoned, and the white tigress had turned her face to look.

She had not looked away in time.

And even though he has already lost a mother, he weeps anyway.

* * *

At the close of the day, he finds Hisa in the garden, where she has fallen asleep leaning against a pillar.

Kimei puts a finger to her lips, hisses something at him, but he passes the threshold anyway, and pauses for a brief moment to observe her, asleep among the summer flowers.

The delicate lines of her face, skin fair as porcelain, long lashes as though painted from an artist’s brush, pale lips.

A stained hand rests on the peonies.

She is tired, perhaps because she had not solicited his help to stir the vats today, old undyed linen stained with more than the work of one day.

He makes his way across the garden, kept the same way that Maki-san would’ve liked it, and leans over her, smiling wickedly before tapping her on the nose. “Little tiger, you’ve fallen asleep in the wrong place.”

She jumps, coming awake all at once. “Hiko!” One of her hands catches the front of his yichang. “You are very mean.”

“And here I was, thinking I was being nice.” He puts on a show of hurt, a hand across his brow, overdramatic woe like one of those theatre players. “Oh! How cruel it is! How cruel!”

She pouts at him. “ _I’m_ the cruel one?” You’re the one going around disturbing people from their rest.”

He offers her an arm to help her up. “I thought you might want to know.” And here he laughs, a little at himself, a little at the curiosity in her eyes. “Kawaguchi-san is home.”

“Chichi-ue’s home?” She gathers her skirts around her in one hand, forcibly shoving her feet back into her shoes, suddenly all aflutter.

He catches her by the elbows when she inevitably loses her balance, and rights her, light as she is, she might have hollow bones. “And now look at you, so eager to be off despite being so upset about being awoken.”

She flaps a hand at him, uncaring and unbothered by his splitting of hairs and insistence on pedantry, still trying to shove her feet back into her shoes.

And for a moment, all is golden.

* * *

The autumn night is deepening, an evening frost stealing across the landscape when he steps out of the shrine, three sticks of incense lit for a woman who was not his mother — could never be his mother — but who had given him so much on the eleventh year of his arrival home.

Across the clearing, the light is still on in Kawaguchi-san’s study, and he walks across to look.

There, Kawaguchi-san asleep in his chair, a scroll of poetry held loosely in his lap. _Ah, worked too late again._

Even in rest, he looks composed, not a strand of hair missing from his topknot, collar straightened, sleeves slightly covering his hands.

Hiko straightens his own sleeves for a moment, before smiling, half rueful. _I suppose our inner character will always show._ Quietly, he steals across the floor to release the scroll from Kawaguchi-san’s hands, careful to set it on the table, open to the same section it’d been when he first touched it.

There is a frost upon the year, and something like frost creeping across Kawaguchi-san’s brow as well, streaks of gray in once black hair.

He shrugs off his own dachang and drapes it over Kawaguchi-san’s shoulders. He will be going to rest soon, and his own room is only a short walk away, in the eastern courtyard. _I won’t need it._

He leans over to blow out the oil lamp and put away the lamp shield. No need to leave a fire hazard in the house even though such things are, for the most part, safe.

“So filial, Hiko.” The softness of the comment makes him pause before the lamp goes out. “You’re a good young man.”

“I knew I should’ve been quieter.” He turns back to Kawaguchi-san, who sits as he had been before, eyes half closed, watching him. “I’m sorry for waking you.”

Kawaguchi-san smiles, fishtail wrinkles fanning out from the corners of his eyes. “The night is not yet so deep.” He rises, holding out Hiko’s dachang. “It’s cold out tonight.”

He laughs and shakes his head, throwing the robe over his shoulders. “Will you ever let someone take care of you? Hisa often complains about how you will not let her do so, and I find I am in agreement on that front.”

“Ah, but to do that would imply that you both are no longer children.” Kawaguchi-san straightens his collar, turning out the peach blossom lining, and smoothing down an errant wrinkle, looks up at him with a fondness he has, perhaps, been too spoiled in seeing. “Even if you are grown, you are still beloved.”

A little boy with hand stitched shoes.

A young man with embroidered cuffs.

He has not changed so much in eleven years.

* * *

“Seek not to follow

In the footsteps of men of old

Seek what they sought.”

— Matsuo Basho

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been working on several of these POV outtakes recently! Hopefully they're enjoyable <3
> 
> ~Tav (Leaf)


	2. The Right of An Honorable Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by JulyFlame.

In the breach of justice,

The right of the honorable man

Is criticism

Of his lord, of the state, and of himself.

— Kusakabe Fusamoto, “In the Breach of Justice”

* * *

"Stay home, Suteo." _Your daughter's six. She should not lose her father so young,_ he does not say. _Especially when she has no mother._ "I don't need you to come with me on this trip."

"Nonsense," Suteo responds. "I go wherever my liege lord needs me, and you will need me to carry your headdress, your confirmation robe, and Chubu's official seal." _You may need me to carry more than that, but I don’t mind._

It is hard to ask for a better friend than this, he supposes. It is hard to ask for a friend like this.

But he and Suteo had grown up together. When he went to school, Suteo had carried his school books.

When he’d gone to the capital, Suteo had carried his trunk.

And when he had gone to the capital to fetch his father’s body, Suteo had carried _him_ , first out of the throne room, and then out of the city on the long, long trip home.

His body servant might need to carry him again this time.

But they do not speak of that, standing there on the walkway in the Kawaguchi house. Some things are too heavy for words.

Some things, like the jade pendant his father used to wear, are now in the grasp of his four year old son. If all goes well, he will return to claim it from Kore-kun.

If not, well, may his mother forgive him.

“Perhaps you should stay home, so you can comfort my wife with stories of how I will certainly not meet my doom.” Shiki will worry, though she has chosen to let him go.

As will his mother.

His mother, who for so many years has borne her grief quietly.

If there is anyone who could persuade him not to go, it is not the merchant’s daughter who had looked at him with both worry and hope, but his mother, who needs only to say a single word.

‘No.’

If Kageyoshi Kiyowara says no, no matter how righteous, no matter how honorable—

He has always been too filial a son.

But his mother had not said no.

Suteo laughs, though he tries hard not to. “Forgive me, milord, I’d rather go with you instead.”

He snorts. “Too scared of my wife?”

Suteo shifts on his feet, his eyebrows raised comically. “Milord, everybody knows it.”

“Knows what?” It is, in many ways, a baited trap, since he and Suteo have been together for so long, but a joke is only funny when the punchline hits.

“Our big madam rules our house with an iron fist and a very sharp glaive.” His wife is the war minister’s only daughter, one who O-Tama-kogo had hoped would be concubine to her eldest, but who had been promised to him since childhood.

Long ago, their fathers had put their heads together and plotted the future happiness of two of their children.

And even now, he and Shiki live in that future happiness.

“Imagine,” he says, lips twitching, “that you are so afraid of my wife, you would rather face a dragon instead.”

Uchiha Izuna’s prone form still haunts him.

_The son of a count should not die by the sword._

But going will cost him.

He might’ve told Hisa-san that it is unlikely that he would die of this — the shock of over ten years ago still lingers at court, for it is rare that a nobleman of his father’s stature dies so dramatically — but the Son of Heaven is unlike any mortal man.

A word from His Majesty would be all it takes to take his life.

No trial needed.

* * *

He sinks to a seat in the capital house, hand resting on the table. His sleeves are black, edged with gold.

The collar constricts his neck, and no amount of gasping can seem to fill his lungs.

“Milord,” Suteo whispers, setting the tea tray down on the table. “Drink something? I brought you tea.”

His hands are shaking. Wanely, he smiles, shakes his head.

The air blurs before him, the world turning upside down.

The headdress weighs so heavy, but he can barely find the presence to take it off.

_Take it off, Fusa-kun, put it on the table. You’ve had a long day._

The voice of his father follows him. Genial.

His lord father had always been well loved in court. If anyone needed a favor, needed advice, if a junior minister made a mistake and needed someone to confess to… who didn’t know Lord Hiramoto and his smile?

Gone.

Gone, and had been gone so long that two weeks in the summer heat, and the coffin stank.

He hadn’t been able to raise the lid.

Gone. Gone. Gone.

There are bells ringing in his head, and no amount of shaking can get rid of them.

“Milord—” Suteo begins, but that word is _wrong._

“Young Master,” he gasps. “I am no lord.”

The mianfu he is wearing says otherwise. New titles, new name.

Eighth prince.

As if the Daimyo is his father.

But he does not want a new father.

He wants _his_ lord father. His own.

He hadn’t the strength to lift the coffin lid.

Why hadn’t he been able to do it? In full view of the court, let them all see what had happened to a loyal servant of His Majesty.

But he had not the strength. He had not the strength.

Suteo does not protest. “Young Master then,” he says, as if humoring him for a time. “You have not eaten all day. Eat something.”

But he cannot do that either, shaking hands, shaking heart.

He’d been leaning on Suteo when they left the throne room, the coffin carried by white pallbearers, wearing proper mourning, though they had nothing to do with the dead man.

He’d been leaning, almost falling, the weight of so much suddenly weighing—

Did his father protect him against all this too?

Suteo directs the other servants in the capital house away, preserving face, at least for now.

They do not need to see this, not so soon after their lord has so suddenly passed away.

Not when their fates rest on the shoulders of a young man barely twenty.

Not when that young man is broken beyond all repair.

* * *

The last dinner he spends at home is filled with the chattering of his children, the gentle clack of lacquered chopsticks, and the weight of Shiki’s eyes. After, as the maids clear away the table, Kore-kun comes around the table to tug at his sleeve.

“Chichi-ue,” Kore-kun says, still playing with the jade pendant almost too big for his hands. “Chichi-ue, Haha-ue says you are going away.”

His eldest is a serious little boy, with brilliant smiles and a deliberate nature, more careful than he was at that age.

He’d grown up without siblings, no one to share anything with unless they were his parents or Suteo until he had gone to school at Lord Iemune’s estate.

His own reckless nature had been curbed when he was twenty, by the sudden shock of his father’s death.

“It will be a short trip,” he says, and wonders, wonders, because he does not _remember_ fully, the last conversation he had had with his father.

_Was it about when I would join the ranks of government ministers like Lord Iemune’s sons?_

_Was it about my coming marriage to Shiki?_

But that time period is covered over with fog in his mind, his father’s last words a sudden summer frost.

“You will have to be good,” he says. “Remember to be kind to Kata-kun. He is only little yet.”

Kore nods, eyes wide but face solemn, before following after Tamasu and Shiki and Kata-kun.

Now, only he and his mother remain at the table.

He raises his eyes to his mother’s face. “Haha-ue—”

She holds up a hand. “I know.”

The word of an honorable man cannot be retracted.

She does not like the idea, that much is plain, but she understands.

He rises and comes to stand before her. “It will be a short trip.”

At least, he hopes it will be.

“You are my only child.” She looks up at his face, holding his sleeves gently. “And more dear to me than the sun.”

He knows.

He has long been her only child, and the whispers at court have not been kind about the princess of second rank failing at producing any other children for the line of Kusakabe.

He has long been her only child, and thus carried all the hopes and joys and sorrows and dreams of both his parents.

“I will not forget.” He promises her this, because he has never forgotten.

She nods and waves him off to follow Shiki back to their courtyard. “As long as you remember how precious you are to me, I will have no regrets.”

That night, Shiki takes down his hair, combs it out with an attention she does not pay to it most nights. “Yome,” he whispers. “Would you regret it?”

She has an iron sense of justice and has had it ever since they were children. But justice is not so easily bought.

His Majesty has little care for shinobi beyond the ones who already work in the inner workings of court, and the Uchiha have long not participated in matters at court with any attention to detail.

She lays her head against his shoulder, one of her hair sticks digging lightly into his skin. “Of course I would.”

They are happy here, away from the concerns of court, though he had feared she would not be in those earliest days of her life here.

But then, she had made a friend in the silk merchant’s daughter.

And suddenly, she was no longer bored.

While the silk merchant’s daughter did not bring many friends with her, she did bring the social knowledge of all of Chubu’s merchant families.

Dangerous waters to navigate during normal times, even more difficult to understand as an outsider.

The merchant class are an inward looking people, distrustful of outsiders, and while individually not as powerful as his nobles, they still, together, represent a formidable section of Chubu’s interests.

While the silk merchant’s daughter, like the silk merchant himself, does not widely publicize her thoughts, her quiet friendship with his wife had tipped the scales, perhaps more than she knows.

She did not bring many friends with her, but she brought herself, and that had been more than enough to ensure the future of his clan.

The survival of a clan weighted against the life of its lord?

That is no choice at all.

* * *

Iemitsu lets himself in, footsteps loud on the stone floor. “Fusa?”

“It’s late,” he says. “And it’s a hot night. You should’ve stayed at home, Mitsu.”

“I couldn’t leave you.” Iemitsu stops before him. “Fusa, I couldn’t leave you. I heard the news that you got into the city this morning, but His Majesty wanted you in morning court and—”

“I know.”

Iemitsu would have heard. Lord Iemune’s knowledge of which way the wind is blowing in court is second to none.

Iemitsu would have heard.

But what could be done?

It has already been two weeks.

“I’m sorry.” Mitsu’s voice is soft.

He almost laughs at this. “It is our fault,” he says. “We live on the front doorstep of the Son of Heaven. It’s only right that sometimes some of us get stepped on and die.”

Iemitsu’s breathing turns sharp. “You _do not_ believe that. Stop it.”

“His Majesty chose to _honor me._ ” He laughs and cannot stop laughing. Cannot stop, cannot stop laughing. “With the rotting corpse of my father and these heaven forsaken robes.” He throws his arms wide, still laughing. “Look at them, Mitsu. Have you ever seen something so ridiculous?”

Iemitsu carefully puts his arms down, looks around as if he expects the entire court to jump out of the woodwork at them. “Fusa, listen to what you’re saying, please, I know you’re grieving, but this is the talk of a _madman._ ”

Quieter. “Please, Fusa, stop laughing, I don’t want to bury you too.”

But he cannot stop.

He laughs until he cries.

Until he cries.

And then he cannot stop crying.

Iemitsu is still talking, gently, words that flow like river water. He hears almost none of it.

“Shiki-chan cannot come to see you because it is so late, but if you do not intend to stay and see her, she told me to tell you that she will wait.”

“I have no dignity to see her.” He does not know when this disgrace will be erased, what sort of honor their household could present to the empire to ever be as well regarded as they were two months ago when he left to return home to his mother.

He is his parents’ only child, his father having never chosen to take any concubines and his mother having never borne any other children to term.

If the Kusakabe clan are to ever be returned to their former glory, he would have to accept a post here.

He would have to stay.

But every moment feels constricting, like there is a noose about his neck.

“She will wait for when you have dignity again.” Iemitsu looks down on him, but only from the vantage point of the standing. “She is already promised to you, and we will not turn aside so easily.”

But it is only natural that Iemitsu would say that now, when the wounds are fresh and spilling blood.

How long can he say that into the future, when he realizes that his friend from childhood has no intention to return to the capital, has no intention to ever take a government position again? Has no intention to make anything of himself.

Never will.

“I—” He chokes on his words.

“I know.” Iemitsu says, something dark and moving in his black eyes. “I know. You don’t have to justify anything to me, Fusa.”

And if that causes him to collapse completely into Iemistu’s arms, none of the people in the room ever mention it.

* * *

It is evening when he enters the capital just barely before the closing of the city gates.

Suteo is silent as they make for the estate in the capital, the gathering dusk all about them.

When they are settled in the main courtyard, watched over by his fourth cousin, Narimoto, and his family, and the evening meal is eaten and the tea is poured, Suteo rolls out the mianfu, careful to lift the headdress lightly from the box it’d been carefully packed away.

No amount of care would ever disguise the cracks, but that is the way of things that shatter.

They cannot be put together whole.

This evening, he sits in the garden, a cup of tea in hand.

It is finer than what they might get out in Chubu, far from the center of civilization.

Iemitsu arrives without much fanfare. His wife’s eldest brother is a steady, meticulous man, one who thinks thrice before he does anything with a mind full of twisty turny thoughts that he rarely reveals the depths of.

“I hear you’re here for a spectacularly loud show,” Iemitsu says, before dropping into the seat across from him and pouring out a cup of tea for himself without asking.

“Tomorrow morning will be a time indeed.” He had not said, specifically, what he is planning.

Not to his father-in-law and not to Iemitsu.

But Iemitsu knows.

Iemitsu’s knowledge is vast, and his ability to guess at what each member of his family is thinking is second to none.

“Any last words you want me to write to O-Shiki if you should fail?” Iemitsu raises an eyebrow at him over the cover of his gaiwan. “Or would you like me to say a few words to Guanyin tomorrow morning?”

“Worry about your own skin if I fail.” He makes a face at Iemitsu.

Funny how the barbs of his brother-in-law still stuck under his skin. “It’s not like you’re going to be very safe.”

Iemitsu only laughs. “I see. I’ll write to my third sister to say that her husband is bullying me, so of course you will come to no harm.”

His frown carves itself deeper onto his face. “Weasel.” Wandering spirit, trickster.

“Alas, I admit it.” Iemitsu continues sipping his tea without a care in the world. “Understand I will never forgive you if you come to harm now, so many years later, when I thought you’d put away your reckless streak.”

“My reckless streak was never put away.” It was ripped to ribbons, long ago.

“You no longer love it here.” Iemitsu sighs, slowly snapping open his folding fan, the clatter of the bamboo and steel spines loud in the night. “I assumed that was your lack of recklessness talking.”

“That isn’t true.” In the son of heaven’s city, there are noise and lights, the sounds of a spectacular show. The city still brings a raw ache to his chest, despite everything.

* * *

They’d received the news in Chubu of course, brought by a shinobi messenger — a Yamanaka, going by the light color of the man’s hair—

They had received the news.

Late as it is.

The accusations of treason, falsifying papers for the records — they’d been stamped with Chubu’s official seal — the declaration of a full trial, the—

The news of his father’s blood staining the wooden floor.

 _It’d been suicide,_ the news says.

_His Majesty was gracious._

_It was never going to be an execution._

But for someone as honorable as Lord Hiramoto, treason is not an accusation that he would survive.

* * *

But then, his love for the capital city had gone out long ago.

In the dead ashes of his former passion for civil service, there is only the dwindling thought that he has disappointed his mother.

He is Kiyowara-hime’s only child; his parents have never been blessed with a second son or a first daughter, so he ought to have carried the banner his father did, entering the service of the Son of Heaven, earning his way into a ministry position through hard work, honor, and a good natured spirit.

But at thirty, he is the lord of a country estate, unambitious Lord Administrator of Chubu, having never become a minister of anything, only visiting court in the winter to turn in his tax records and submit his governing report.

And even then, only because his wife would like to visit her family.

In all other respects, he is willing to let the ashes lie dead as the day they’d gone up in flames.

His love for the government had died when his father did.

And since he cannot properly serve, he has chosen to leave instead. To live more simply than his brothers-in-law.

But that does not erase the thought that perhaps he has failed some more important duty, that he has not really served or improved the lives of the common people.

It is the right and the duty of a nobleman to provide for those left to his care.

And the failure of his life is that he had not done his best to provide for his people.

Perhaps that is why he now stands outside the palace gates, looking at the guard through his eight-fringed headdress, mianfu heavy all about him.

The settled weight of golden dragons makes him feel different this morning, despite the fog settled densely through the streets, having rolled off of the lake with the rise of the chill.

The day is overcast and gloomy, no sun to chase the fog away.

But still he stands, requesting entrance to the palace complex.

It is earlier in the year than he normally arrives.

“His Majesty does not wish to see visitors today.”

Morning Court will not be opened for the year until winter has set in, and all the nobles or their representatives have arrived with the year’s tax reports.

Of course, His Majesty does not wish to see visitors. He never does.

“I do not believe His Majesty would’ve remembered to tell you.” He tilts his head to one side, letting the pearls clatter against one another, a reminder of his status though he normally does not choose to flaunt it. “But if you delay our meeting, I assure you, His Majesty will not be the only one upset.”

He is let in.

* * *

He’d been summoned to the palace almost instantly upon his arrival to the imperial city, a eunuch under His Majesty’s personal employ already stationed at the door of the capital estate.

Narimoto could not get a word in edgewise.

Suteo comes with him, trailing behind himself and Eunuch Ishida, silent, like the family shrine filled with ancestors, former statesmen, full of glory.

High noon, and with Eunuch Ishida’s personal escort, he enters the palace complex, and then is suddenly whisked away down a side walkway and into a set of rooms he has not seen before.

Eunuch Ishida bows. “After you, Lord Kusakabe.”

He has no choice.

He opens the door.

The maidservant he meets inside is carrying His Majesty’s robes, black mianfu edged with gold, motifs he cannot quite make out on either sleeve, a prince’s headdress resting atop it, she curtsies. “Lord Kusakabe,” she says, though that is not his name. “His Majesty requested that you get dressed for court.”

But he is already dressed for court.

“I don’t understand,” he says, for once, more fool than playing the fool.

There is a white and terrible frost upon his thoughts.

“His Majesty said that I was to bring you your new robes, Lord Kusakabe.” The maidservant curtsies again, a slight tremble to her arms.

She is afraid, then.

The both of them are afraid, but of different things — He, of His Majesty and what is to come, she, of him and his volatile mood.

He breathes out, feels the unrelenting frost creeping forward, through the noon, through the summer, through the sweat beaded on his forehead, through his hollow, aching chest.

“Put it on the table,” he hears himself say. “I will be sure to not keep His Majesty waiting.”

* * *

The Drum of Grievances in the outer imperial courtyard is unattended, affixed to the outer wall, at the height of his head, as wide as his arm span.

It had once been a war drum, brought into the new palace complex by the founder of the Kageyoshi dynasty generations ago, able to be heard far and wide on a battlefield of screaming, dying men.

It is not a lightly sounded drum, hence the lack of guards.

No fool dares to sound it, the drumsticks in their holders on either side.

The pearls in his headdress clatter as he steps forward.

His sleeves are heavier than normal, but he throws them back, arms bare up to the elbows.

Suteo carries the details of his grievance that he wrote the night before, after Iemitsu had left.

He reaches out and pulls the drumsticks free.

It is time to sound the great drum.

In the instant before his first strike lands, the sun burns away the fog.

He is no longer twenty.

The low boom of the drum echoes, from the outer courtyard down the walkways, up in the front hall, from where he stands up to His Majesty’s garden and beyond.

“Injustice!” Suteo shouts. “There is injustice in the Empire.”

He continues drumming.

“Your Majesty,” he raises his own voice above the sound of the drum. “There has been blood spilled.”

 _Address this grievance,_ the war drum weeps. _There is injustice here._

_Address it._

* * *

The black mianfu, after he has had time and the wits about him to look at it now that the maidservant has retreated to outside, is different from His Majesty’s, though the four clawed dragons across the shoulders and sleeves are similar.

On the back, there is an embroidered crane, wings outstretched.

It smelled of newness, the highest grade silk, heavy gold thread embroidery.

His hands shake upon looking at it, almost uncontrollably.

There are only three men in the world allowed to wear dragons — His Majesty, the current reigning Daimyo, His Highness Prince Nagakuni, the confirmed crown prince, and His Majesty’s only living brother, His Highness Prince Tomoyuki, Prince of Kanto.

Only three men in the world who can wear dragons, and yet none with a family crest of cranes.

“Milord,” Suteo whispers. “I’ll help you put it on?”

He does so, unwillingly, almost wondering what His Majesty might mean by this.

He does so, with a faltering heart and closed eyes letting Suteo affix the prince’s headdress to his head, a long wooden stick through his topknot.

When his eyes open, he begins to walk the long walk back up to the throne room where His Majesty held court.

* * *

He has been drumming for a not inconsiderable amount of time when a eunuch — young, Eunuch Ishida having retired some years ago after thirty years of diligent service to the countryside with his little sister’s family — appears.

“Lord Kusakabe— no, Your Highness, this one apologizes,” _He is only young,_ Fusamoto thinks, _he is only young, and yet I am making life hard for him._ “Your Highness,” the eunuch begins again, “His Majesty wants to know what grievance you could possibly have so early in the morning.”

He continues drumming. “The life of a nobleman,” he says, “the son of a Count is about to perish in my region.”

The eunuch’s face goes ghastly pale. “Your Highness’s son?”

He could have worded it better, true. But he does not reword it. “Tell His Majesty,” he says, over the sound of the drum, his arms tireless, “I wish for a full court trial.”

The eunuch flitters away in the background.

Behind him, Suteo repeats his mantra, as he has been doing for as long as Fusamoto has been drumming. “Injustice!”

No better or more loyal friend indeed.

“There is injustice in the Empire!”

It is not long before the eunuch returns, sun in the sky like the eye of heaven upon them. “Your Highness,” the young man bows. “His Majesty will receive you and your complaint.”

“There hasn’t been enough time for court to gather yet.”

The deep echo of the war drum weeping continues.

_Injustice._

_Injustice._

_Injustice._

“Your Highness, the court has gathered.”

He had heard them pass behind him, whispers a storm he is incapable of picking words from, and lets the sound of the drum stop.

He lets the drum beats stop.

Slowly, he replaces the drumsticks in their proper holders, and turning his face towards the throne room, strides forward with a confidence he does not feel.

* * *

The mianfu is heavy, pearls swinging back and forth too loudly, and ever so slightly ill fitting around his shoulders, slightly too long at the hem.

The gathered ministers are silent when he enters, announced by the crier.

“Lord Kusakabe Fusamoto, Lord Administrator of Shunan, Count of Chubu!”

It is wrong.

It is wrong, and if he had any strength at all, he would’ve grabbed the man and shaken him.

 _It is wrong,_ he would’ve said.

He is no lord.

Only twenty years old.

He is no lord.

But before him, at the very end of the path he must walk, there is a coffin.

Every step he takes, every inch of space—

Had that been where they cleaned his father’s blood out of the wood?

Which of the red pillars had—

There is nothing left in all the world, just the slow stumble forward, a coffin at the end of his long walk.

The stench of death and decay greets him when he is closer, a sound ripping its way out of his throat as he falls to his knees before the cedar wood box.

“Fusamoto,” His Majesty’s voice from far above him. “I present the mianfu to you to honor your late father’s service and my beloved cousin Kiyowara-hime’s sacrifices in raising you. From this day forward, may our country know you as the eighth imperial prince — His Highness the Prince of Harmonious Peace.”

His head drops forward, hitting the coffin lid, pearls bouncing — they should’ve made a sound, but they make no sound at all, everything covered with a dense and heavy frost.

“I thank His Majesty for his mercy and wisdom. May you live ten thousand years.”

There is nothing left in all the world, the Son of Heaven never able to replace what he had taken.

* * *

“Lord Kusakabe.” His Highness is seated on the dragon’s throne, though ill pleased, and through the growing crowd of ministers and courtiers, he could see the crown prince in attendance as well.

A step behind him, Suteo carries the grievance tablet.

The autumn court is not as vibrant as the summer court or the winter court, but then, court does not convene quite so often these days.

He pauses before the dias where His Majesty sits upon the dragon’s throne, and bows. “A thousand greetings to Your Majesty. May you live ten thousand years.”

“Rise.”

He rises.

“You have sounded the Drum of Grievances.” And now a full court is gathered. “State your grievance, Lord Kusakabe.”

He takes a deep breath. “I come to ask for justice,” he says, and no part of him trembles, not even the heart suddenly released from its ten year frost, “for the youngest son of the Count of Tohoku, Uchiha Izuna, who, even now, lies on his deathbed in Shunan.” His words set off another storm of whispers, but his eyes are watching His Majesty’s lined face, weathered with the worries of so many years. “I come to ask for justice for the merchant household of Kawaguchi, from my region, unjustly bullied by noble powers from outside of Chubu, where my power does not venture.” He raises his voice, no longer silent.

No longer afraid. “I ask for justice for my people, so that the common citizen knows that our country is still ruled by a wise and fair arbitrator of law. That from beggar to duke, we may all be assured that the law will hear our grievance.”

In the breach of justice, the right of the honorable man is criticism — of his lord, of the state, and of himself.

These words his mother had taught him, painstakingly, a finger under each word when he first learned to read, the princess of second rank, careful to always model virtue for her only child.

These words his father had always lived by, a count of a country province, but well beloved by all and forthright because of it.

_An empire falls when honorable men stand by and do nothing, too afraid of losing their heads to speak a single word._

_An empire falls when it has silenced all honorable men._

“The highest court of this land will hear your grievance.” His Majesty’s face is lined with the worries of decades.

Even when he had been a child, the daimyo had not been young.

“By the power vested in me, I open the high court as its Lord Administrator. State your case, Lord Kusakabe.”

* * *

By the time he rises to leave, ink is already drying on His Majesty’s decree to the Senju, stamped with the imperial seal, the scroll of golden silk ready to be rolled up and handed over to the Nara messenger.

Opinions on the decree are on every mouth.

While bullying the common citizen is common practice for the ranks of upper nobility, killing them is not. Killing them is not, and if he had _heard_ that a man under the name of Kawaguchi died by Senju hands all those months ago, he would’ve arrived earlier than this to ask His Majesty to hand down the law.

The loss of a title, even a baronic one, is not a light punishment.

_In light of the crimes committed, it is clear that the Senju have overstepped their bounds, growing prosperous from improperly wielding their power. From this day forward, the name of Senju has been stricken from the ranks of nobility. Their clan mon is forfeit._

_I summon the head of their household, Senju Butsuma, to the capital within thirty days to explain himself and turn over the perpetrators of these crimes._

_Fail to do so, and the sentence will fall to his household, within nine degrees of kindred._

But in the discussion, His Majesty’s distaste of shinobi beyond the three clans who served in the palace complex had once again reared its head.

The messenger who would come with him to deliver this to the Uchiha is an Akimichi, a young man who possessed the gravity of character that most of the imperial guard wears.

He has not met the Captain of the East Faction before this, given that the East Faction dealt in internal palace affairs, but he had been assured of their talent and Akimichi-san's abilities.

_In light of Uchiha Izuna’s crimes committed in the heat of his youth over a feud that long should have ended, His Majesty believes that it would be proper for him to give up his blade._

_His Majesty trusts that Lord Uchiha will see to the matter in a way that is fitting._

And if he has failed Izuna in that, he admits it and will admit it with apology when he next sees the young man.

* * *

On the book by the bedside,

Stands two lines of verse

One going, one returning

Both speak of home.

— Kusakabe Fusamoto, “On the Book by the Bedside”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much everyone. I'll see everyone next week.
> 
> ~Tav (Leaf)


	3. The House of Sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by UmbreonGurl, drowsyivy and JulyFlame.

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”

— Tennessee Williams, _The Glass Menagerie_

* * *

_She has careful hands,_ people have always said about her. _Careful hands and a careful heart._

The daughter of Whirlpool Country has a careful nature, listening before speaking, thinking thrice before doing.

At least, that is what they say about her. They do not know the storm that hides beneath her skin, or that her best decisions are made with staggering recklessness.

After all, she is here because upon first meeting Hashirama, she had decided how the second half of her life would be written.

She is still careful when she peels back the clothing to finally heal Hashirama’s shoulder wound.

He could’ve done it himself if he wasn’t still shaking, in shock at what had happened. His right arm hangs limply at his side, nerves and sinew severed, flesh shredded, messy in all ways, the scarlet of his blood dyeing the cream colored cotton, and her heart hurts.

Any longer, and he would no longer have use of that hand, or, at least, the same fine motor control he had only this morning, when nothing had yet gone wrong.

Or, at least, when nothing had _seemed_ to have gone wrong.

On most days, the time they spend together is filled with his chatter, his hopes for the rice, his questions at what had gone on in the house while he was gone — only in the winter does he have the time to spare to spend all day with her — but today, he has no words.

And she, who always thought too much before speaking, has equally little to say.

Gently, she gathers her chakra, encourages the nerves to reconnect, flesh to stitch itself back together, coaxes the skin to grow back, measured, slow.

If she does not act in haste, there will be no scar.

None visible for the eye to see, but all too visible for the heart to feel.

She could weep over this, for her husband is a kind man who does not deserve a father like this, but it would solve nothing, so she does not.

“Will you tell me what you are thinking?” she asks at last, having arrived at the right configuration of words for what she means.

Fire Country remains baffling to her, full of layers.

She has adapted to the clothing, two-piece outfits, cross collared blouses and long, pleated skirts, and the hairstyles, swept up, plaited, and carefully piled, and the way that people always spoke in tongues the words ‘honor,’ ‘duty,’ and ‘filial piety’ taking on all sorts of different connotations.

But she has not gotten used to the customs.

She has gotten used to the little differences in regional dialect, the way that people stare at her red hair, and their oddities when referring to music and dance.

But she has not gotten used to the way the Senju Clan runs, as if there is a knife on either side of her throat. One wrong move meant much here, to the man who rules this clan with an iron fist and unforgiving heart.

Sometimes, she misses her father, but Prince Ashina would be the first to tell her that she had chosen a distant marriage over a close one, that is her fortune, and her fate.

Her husband is a kind man, with skin weathered by the sun and tender eyes, soft smiles and gentle hands.

Her father-in-law is a different matter.

But she should think herself lucky.

She did not marry into a household with a mother-in-law to watch the moods of, and men like Senju Butsuma can be avoided and worked around far more easily than a woman who knows all the games that other women play.

Hashirama opens his mouth, but no words appear, only a small noise, somewhere between a sob and a sigh.

She draws his yichang back over his shoulder, the layers of cream cotton still rended though his shoulder is saved.

“I heard the decree,” she says, still thinking, a small spark of rage within her like a lightning storm. She had not been there. Women are not meant to be present at imperial decrees. They are accepted by the clan head — though Senju Butsuma is no longer a clan head — and his male kin. “The knife is already at your throat, Hashira. What do you waver for?”

Thirty days to explain themselves.

Thirty days to right a wrong.

Thirty days to somehow smooth this over before they are all slaughtered.

The knife is at his throat, but still he wavers.

“He is my father,” her husband says at last, a storm rocking in his eyes. “And I am his eldest living son.” _The only living son of his wife._ “It is the duty of sons to be filial.”

But his filial piety would see them all to the executioner’s blade.

“When the father is virtuous, the child is filial.” Her father had always said it thus, her hand in his as they walked along the beach. For a moment, she misses her father and her country — if Prince Ashina knew of this, from beyond the waves, would he come to think of some path to set her free?

But that is the silly wishing of a little girl.

Her father has more trust in her than that.

“Yes,” Hashirama says.

“ _Only_ when the father is virtuous is the child filial.” They owe a debt of obligation to the parents who raise them, love them, sacrifice for them — owe it to love them, honor them, respect them — a debt of love and honor, filiation for what has been given.

She does not owe this to her mother, the daughter of a Water Country nobleman who had left them for other shores when she was three, only to her father, who had sheltered her and taught her ever since she was a child, who had _valued her_ as herself.

It did not matter to him that she was his only child, or that he has no sons.

But her father-in-law does not value her husband, or indeed, any of his other children.

He is owed no piety in return.

Hashirama is silent for a time, head bowed. “He is still my father,” he says, for a moment, anguish wreathed in the tone of his voice, defeat in the line of his shoulders. He knows it is not right.

“Will you let him kill you?” she asks, coming to sit beside him. “Is your life his right?”

She has heard about his mother, Senju Kaku, who had died the year he turned thirteen, and of his father’s concubine, Tamura Yaso.

She has heard of his three older sisters, all married out to less than equal circumstances.

She has heard of what Senju Butsuma has done to the women in his life, though quietly, from the servants, many years after they were all either married off or dead.

She does not want to imagine what the cornered man will now do to his still living sons.

But men’s hearts, those are hard to change.

And Hashirama’s is slow to anger.

He will not turn against his father so easily, not even if it is his life on the line.

“If you had to choose,” she starts and feels like an instigator in this trouble, though she is not one. All she does is speak the truth and carefully at that. Push too hard too fast, and something will break. She does not fancy the results of that. “Would it be your little brother or your father that you would save?”

There is a right answer to this question, not based on the relative love or familial affection for either individual, not based on idealism or practicality, but upon the values that underpin their society.

“When it is all of our necks?” His head still bowed, he does not seem to recognize when she takes his hand. “Mito-love, I am not so clouded or blind as all that.”

No, she knows he wears his denseness as a shield. Pretense comes easily to him as it does to her, though one would not suspect it — he is so earnest and kind — but that mask of obtuseness is just that, a mask.

They’ve both done what they must to survive in this world.

She squeezes his hand. “I know.”

He smiles at her, though his eyes are sad. “Do you suppose I will ever be able to explain this to Madara? Or that Tobira will ever want to come home?”

_Even if I do what you want me to do, will that which has been shattered ever be put together whole?_

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.” Carefully, she draws the blankets over Hashirama, who has slumped against the bed frame, suddenly tired. “Rest, Hashira. We still have some days to think this over.”

Thirty days.

Thirty days, but the incense is burning.

* * *

She takes tea in the afternoon, out on the engawa, gently considering her options. Ran brings it to her on a tray, and she delicately wafts the scent of shincha with the lid of her gaiwan, watching tea leaves unfurl and sink slowly to the bottom before taking a sip.

Her next move will come like the strike of a viper.

But for now, she lies in wait.

Delicate peach blossoms fan out over the white porcelain, a profusion of pink petals and delicate stems.

Hashirama had given them to her for a wedding present, almost shy, a gesture of goodwill for his foreign wife.

After so long spent wondering about the story of her mother — a foreign woman she barely remembers who had married a man she’d not known well enough and then left when she could no longer bear the words they spoke about her at court — Mito wonders when she has become her mother. Wada Yone had not managed to make her love with her foreign husband in a foreign land last.

But she is not her mother, and the love in her heart is not the embers of a dying fire.

“Mito-hime,” Ran whispers, drawing closer so that they might not be overheard. “Half the kitchen help is gone.”

And it has only yet been less than half a day.

But she had suspected this.

Servants talk, and something as hot as wildfire like this — the loss of the clan title, the threat of execution, the shame of it all, the spilling of the heir’s blood in the front courtyard, Tobirama’s sudden and abrupt need to flee the wrath of his father — yes, they will talk.

After all, an edict for the execution of nine degrees of kindred from the head of a household includes the servants.

It is no wonder that they have fled. “Keep it hidden for now.” _From my father-in-law,_ she does not need to add.

Ran nods and turns to go see to the situation.

She will not need it hidden for too much longer.

Tea has given her time to think. “And tell Kon-chan to fetch my writing desk and the heavy paper. There’s much I need to write about.”

In her mind’s eye, she pictures Senju Butsuma’s handwriting, neat and angular, much like Tobirama’s — but his each word is a gashed wound on the page, as though his writing brush is also a sword.

That will not do for what she wants.

She considers still further, sipping at her tea.

“Mito-hime?” It is Kon-chan, young and spindly, with her hair done up in two braided rings, coming in from outside. “I brought you your moveable writing desk and the heavy paper like you told Ran.”

Kon is the youngest of the handmaids that came with her from Uzu’s shores as part of her bridal entourage, only seventeen years old this year, fourteen the year they had left Uzu.

“Set it by my side and come sit with me.” She pats the smooth, polished wood beside her and waits until Kon comes to sit, feet hanging over the edge of the engawa, little red shoes with their upturned toes and delicate seal-work embroidery littering the edges as flowers landing in the dust.

“Mito-hime,” Kon sighs, swinging her feet back and forth, careful to grind ink for her evenly. “What will we do now? The Master of the Senju will not yield.”

If she fails at this, Kon-chan will also meet her end under the executioner’s blade.

She looks out at the garden, ornate stone and gentle blood grass waving, the fish pond in one corner, the austere wisteria, regal despite its age clinging to one of the red pillars, small peach trees lining the path, and thinks of how, despite the deepening autumn — the season of death and decay — this courtyard still bursts with life.

“Kon-chan,” she says, contemplatively dipping her brush into the black ink. “Look at how beautiful the flowers are.”

“They are beautiful.” Kon pauses in her ink grinding to look out at the garden, laden heavy with the last hurrah of summer, delayed a little by Hashirama’s chakra, as he had left to go tend to the fields. “Fire Country is a beautiful place.”

And none are more beautiful than Hashirama’s flowers, so carefully tended to, even when he has so little time.

“But all flowers fade, given time.” She pauses over the paper, her brush heavy with ink, still thinking. “And yet, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could go back to a time when they have not yet faded?”

“But no one can go back in time, Mito-hime.”

And indeed, no one can.

But that is not what she means.

Carefully, she traces a downward stroke, her handwriting still her own. “Women are flowers, Kon-chan. Our Master of the Senju had two of his own.”

A wife and a concubine.

That and the writing desk give Kon all the information she needs. She beams, rising to her feet. “You’re right. I’ll see to it.” And with the delicate fluttering of her pink sleeves trailing behind her, she’s off to see to it.

A half hour of calligraphy later, Nami comes out to fetch her with hand rolled noodle soup and more information on her currently still not located brother-in-law. “The Master of the Senju has sent out a searching party,” Nami says, by way of conversation opener. “He has gone to lead it personally.”

“They will not find him.” _Unless he wants to be found._ Tobirama is a better sensor than his father, and no one will turn him over to his father given the circumstances. She takes a sip of the noodle broth with her soup spoon, and sets it aside to pick up the lacquered chopsticks for the longevity noodles.

Butsuma being out will help Kon in her search for letters that she is sure are somewhere.

Letters written to lovers do not make the paper bleed from ink-wounds.

Typically.

She can only hope that Senju Butsuma is a typical enough man.

She will have to leave this mission to Kon. Young as she is, Kon has never been flighty.

“He will be in a foul mood when he returns.” Nami sighs, carefully straightening her sleeves and pushing a loose wisp of hair behind her ear.

Of the six handmaids who had followed her from Uzu, Nami is the most wild of them, least used to the methods of dress and comportment in Fire Country.

In Uzu, Nami had been a shinobi and a sailor, light on the rigging and fearless at the prow, respected by all and more than a little bit feared for her lightning temper and quick draw.

Here in Fire Country, she has been relegated to merely handmaid, and even three years of learning the customs and comportment have left her still on the back foot.

“All the better for him not to notice with.” Having finished her noodles, and the late afternoon light being a bit too bright for her current spot on the engawa, she rises, passing the tray with its empty bowl to Nami, and picks up her writing desk and the still drying calligraphy she’d been playing with.

Down one side of the heavy paper, there are two characters.

陪 Pei

葬 Zang

While the calligraphy is beautiful, the words themselves are anything but.

People are not grave goods, and the death of hundreds speaks of foul play.

Someone out there has been plotting for this to have suddenly exploded in fire.

The Uchiha and the Senju have been killing each other for generations now, if her husband’s relatives are to be believed, and yet, it is only _now_ that someone on the opposing side has gotten the attention of the ruling daimyo. Only now have trading contracts been abruptly severed.

Uchiha Izuna’s death cannot have sparked such waves unless someone near the Uchiha has used this as an opportunity.

Someone with clear eyes and a ruthless mind.

Someone with the power to bring this to the daimyo.

But she, lacking more information, does not know who it could possibly be.

Down the other side of the sheet, an accompanying pair of characters.

Suan 算

Pan 盘

_What a brilliant game of Go._

_What a ruthless net is closing in on us from all sides._

* * *

By the time her honored father-in-law returns, having not located his shu son in any of the places in the fields that they had checked, concludes — in his angry roaring at least — that Tobirama must’ve fled much further than the edges of the Senju Lands.

Mito herself does not believe there is even a grain of truth in such a thought.

Tobirama is nothing if not filial. His duty demands that he remains close, but his sense of self preservation has forced him to flee the path of his father’s wrath.

He will not have gone far, but since he is far better at hiding than his father is at searching…

Still though, Ran has admirably taken over the kitchen with several more of the people Mito had brought with her as part of her entourage, and thus far, they had managed a good approximation of what a typical dinner would be like to hide the loss of the kitchen staff, which would only enrage her honored father-in-law even more.

She does not need him enraged.

Not yet.

“Where is Hashirama?” The question echoes through the courtyard, long before she sees him coming.

If she were a more metaphorical woman, she would’ve said that his voice flattened the flowers.

But she is not.

The flowers do not so much as flicker.

She curtsies, careful to look at him through her downturned lashes. “Honored Father-in-Law,” she murmurs. “Hashirama has gone out looking.”

She has carried this part for three years now. She can be patient and carry it a little longer.

Her husband has not gone anywhere, still sleeping fitfully after she had made patient work of his shoulder, but this is _her_ courtyard.

Her father-in-law has little power here, even on a regular day.

Soon, he will have no power in the house at all.

There is still fury on his face. The storm that is Senju Butsuma is rarely so appeased without blood. “You,” he snarls, “are too good a liar.”

But she has stayed in her curtsy, position immaculate, blocking his path. “It is late,” she says, eyes still lowered. “Surely, my honored father-in-law would prefer to eat and pay respects to his ancestors, to ask them for guidance?”

_After all, that is what civilized men do._

If he does want to move her, he will be surprised to find that she is no flower, but the serpent under it.

With a scowl and a grunt, he turns aside, unwilling to test the serpent.

She turns her attention elsewhere.

* * *

That evening finds her in the courtyard of Butsuma’s younger brother, if only because she has heard from Ran that he had taken food in a basket out in the direction of the rice fields, headed in a different direction than his older brother.

The basket has not yet returned, despite the hour.

Senju Tanama is a much different sort of man than his elder brother. Where his older brother is brash, Tanama-ji is cautious.

Tobirama will not be going hungry, not with his uncle still around.

Small mercies. Hashirama would be beside himself if Tobirama had to bear being starved as well as threatened and hunted for.

“Ah, it is Mito-hime.” Tanama-ji is eating alone tonight, having sent his wife and daughters away. Touka has likely made her own excuses to be elsewhere — there is a Hatake man that she is sweet on and has been for years to bid goodbye to. “Here to question an old man?”

She laughs, hiding behind her fan, and steps into the courtyard. “Not in the way you think.”

He offers her the seat across from him at the low table, and she takes it, still twirling her fan in her hands as she thinks.

“I have done nothing wrong,” he says and looks her in the eye while doing so.

“I did not say you have.” But she does have questions to ask and allies to make, and she must find the wherewithal to do it.

The lives of hundreds depend on it.

Her husband’s cute nieces and nephews, her handmaids, the rest of this family…they depend on the willingness of one man to bend and admit his mistakes.

But her honored father-in-law will never admit to it.

Things will have to be helped along.

“Your handmaid in the kitchen implied it.” Tanama-ji sighs. “I assumed you would hear of it. And here you are.”

“Here I am,” she agrees and, with a straight wrist, pours him another cup of wine. “Because I do not intend to be the grave goods of any man who thinks that the mountains are tall and the daimyo is far.”

_And he lives in a land where the law does not touch._

The dragon has turned his eyes south, and he does not like what he sees.

And so the long arm of his law has reached where her honored father-in-law believes he can do as he likes.

“We are all about to be grave goods.” The corners of Tanama-ji’s mouth turn down. He has picked up the cup of wine she has poured, but not a drop has passed his lips. “It has been over thirty years since our father died.” The man before her sighs, suddenly aged more than his fifty some years. “I have always done my best by this name, and yet, this is how it ends.”

His resignation bleeds, blood in the water, a profusion of pink.

“I do not believe that, and neither do you.” She taps her round fan against the edge of the table, looking up at the moon. He brought food out to Tobirama of his own free will. Whatever his mind says, his heart has not yet accepted death. “The gods do not unjustly punish us for our good deeds.”

Sometimes, one has to take matters into one’s own hands, but that is the fault of other mortals, not the gods.

Reports from the other end of the house said that Kon-chan has succeeded in persuading their Master of the Senju into a drunken stupor in the midst of dinner, laughing and flattering him all the while, and then proceeding on with her mission.

Soon, she will have almost all of what she needs, but she still will need allies.

“I assume that Touka has gone to see her Hatake?”

On the other side of the table, Tanama-ji throws back his cup of wine and sets the cup back on the table. “Do not remind me of my children, Mito-hime.”

“I know how we may cross this river, Uncle.” He is avoiding her eyes now, pouring himself another cup. “But I will need your help.”

_Do I have it?_

He throws back another cup. “Mito-hime, what you speak of is—”

“Only what we must do to survive.” She pours Tanama-ji another cup in solidarity.

When he looks at her, wryness in his eyes, she shrugs easily. “Another cup won’t hurt you, Uncle.”

He eyes the second cup in his set before flipping it over before her and filling it as well. “Kanpai, Hime.”

They drink to it.

* * *

When she returns, Hashirama is awake, his hair loose about his shoulders, as dark as the earth, his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped loosely before him. “Mito-love,” he says with something heavy on his face. “I had a dream.”

He did not ask where she had gone, so late at night.

She sits down in the chair at the table and picks up the clothing she had been mending. There is a pamphlet there, his handwriting upon it. She suspects that she will not like it, and so does not look to see what it says. “Tell me about it?”

“We may all die, no matter what I do or say.” He stares at his hands. “But you have always been so good to me. You are not his daughter. His sins and sorrows are not yours to carry. There is a way,” and here he swallows, beset by both nerves and too many thoughts long unthought, “for you to divest yourself fully from this.”

“There is no way for me to divest myself.” She rises, cups his face in her hands. “I am your wife. I have chosen this path for myself. Hashira, in this life, once a woman has chosen how the second half of her life will be written, it is a story that _must be_ written. Every last stroke, to the end, be it bitter or sweet.”

“I did not want to write it.” His eyes are far away, seeing something she cannot see. “I do not want you to leave. But how selfish would I be to not set you free from this when I can?”

So that is what is on the table.

He has written her the articles of divorce stating on what grounds he is unsatisfied with her.

She is free to return to Uzu, to the halls of her father, disgraced but not dead if she so chooses.

But this, she does not choose.

“And did you think,” one more crime to add to her honored father-in-law’s list of crimes, “that you had married a coward? Or that I would choose to flee because it is easy?” She is not her mother, who had left because of the idle talk of others, because she could not bear for her choices to be examined and judged. “If you do send this to the magistrate, I will contest it. Every last article, every word. There will not be enough time for them to divorce us before thirty days have ended. If we must die, then we die together.”

_Would you rather spend this time in happiness or in grief, Husband?_

_You make your choices as I make mine._

_I choose to walk with you, but will you choose to walk with me?_

He laughs at this, half laughing, half sobbing. “I do not want you to die with me.”

“But that is what I intend.”

If this crisis can be averted by human hands — she is playing Go while the pieces are flying through the air, the table overturned, against an opponent she doesn’t know in the least — then she will avert it.

If it cannot be averted, no sweeter death than to die hand in hand.

In silence, he rises, picking up the pamphlet on the table as he goes. “If my wife does not wish to leave me, then we live and die together, hand in hand.”

The divorce papers are consigned to the lantern flame.

* * *

Kon-chan slips back into the courtyard just after the breaking of dawn while Ran is doing her hair. Hashirama is already away, having risen and dressed some time ago, and then left; for what exactly, she is uncertain.

Nami lets her in at the sound of knocking, and Kon-chan, spindly and small, bounces her way in excitedly, no worse for wear for what had happened last night.

“I have everything, Mito-hime.” She unseals a sheath of letters, brimming with the past.

The Master of the Senju had two flowers and seems to have written to them often in the past.

She is uncertain if she can quite square the circle, looking at the prose and depth of emotion present here, having known no other father-in-law besides the beast who grunts and growls and occasionally roars with fury when provoked or angered, but he had been someone once, young and dashing perhaps, for a woman to have resigned herself to concubinage to follow him.

But both wife and concubine had died.

And the man who had written these letters died with them.

“The words he uses here are so pretty.” Kon-chan holds one up to the weak morning light, watches it waft through the heavy paper. “How could the Master of the Senju ever write these verses?”

“You’re still little, Kon-chan.” She laughs and sets the letters and poetry aside to begin her own drafting at her desk. “Words are wind. They don’t mean much.”

Hashirama has never much been one for pretty declarations or good poetry, but what he does give means much more.

It had not been his wealth or his charisma that had won her, and now that both are gone, ash like the divorce settlement he’d burned last night, she did not wake to regret her choices.

Carefully, she studies the handwriting, notes their softer edges, the lighter airier application of the brush, the way the ink pools, the edges of characters slightly blurred with ink feathering off at the end of a downstroke.

Much can be told about a man in his handwriting.

And these letters tell her that her honored father-in-law, for all he is a beast now, had still been a man once.

She feels no remorse for her plans. The fact that he had once been a man does not make her waver from her course.

It might even be merciful.

Let the man he used to be give him basis for the pretense at an honorable end.

And so, grinding her own ink, she begins the letter she intends to send in her honored father-in-law’s hand.

* * *

Afternoon finds her honored father-in-law in his rooms once more after having failed yet again to locate Hashirama _or_ Tobirama.

From what she hears, his mood is black and his temper is dire.

She slips her unsealed letters into her sleeve and prepares a tea tray, all she will need to take to see her honored father-in-law for the last time.

Kon-chan laid the seals last night while he was still drunk at the dinner table and pillaged his letter box. He did not notice in the morning.

All she needs now is for him to sit and activate them.

He has not noticed now, ruminating as he does over what he will do when he finds Tobirama.

The first thought had been to kill him and present his body to the Daimyo, perhaps in the vain hope that such a thing would appease His Majesty.

But such a thing would do nothing.

Now, it appears as though he intends to find Tobirama and take him to the Capital, to force his shu son to confess to crimes he had not committed except under his father's orders — though that will likely be omitted when before His Majesty.

She balances the tea tray on one hand and, with the other, raps on the doorframe. “Honored Father-in-Law, may I come in?”

One beat.

Two.

A grunt comes from within.

She pushes the door open and heads in, tea tray still balanced on one arm.

She is silent as she sets down the tea tray, careful to stay out of his reach. No reason to make this trip more fraught than it already is.

After all, while she is certain he will die, she needs it to look different than an external struggle. His knife is on the table, sheathed in dark wood, hilt burnished.

The teapot and gaiwan are set on the table, and she opens the box of tea leaves, carefully adds only a few leaves to the bottom of the gaiwan before lifting the teapot, one hand holding the handle, the other lightly holding the lid, and pours the tea.

Afterwards, she sets out the small dish of flaky pastries filled with the last of the red bean paste in the house, as new paste has not been made of the recent harvest due to the uproar. It has been an odd autumn, and it will be an odder winter.

If there is winter for them to see.

She rises, careful to deepen her bow. “These are but thoughtless actions. I hope that my honored father-in-law can still appreciate the spirit in which they were done.”

He waves an impatient hand at her.

A dismissal.

But she is not ready to leave yet.

Not when he has yet to sit.

She pauses at the doorway, turns her head back to look him in the eye. “It is thankless work, to look for Tobira-kun when he does not want to be found.” _But you will not be looking anymore._

He is hovered, half sitting. “I didn’t take you for one to keep running your mouth, woman.”

He sits.

And in the space between breaths, she is before him, watching as the seals activate, stripping him of his chakra, binding him to the chair.

“I do not,” she says, looking upon him, a dispassionate judge. “But your time is over.”

He blusters.

He rages.

But his time is over.

She watches him as he attempts to fight it, until the mask slips off and cracks.

“Tell me why you wish to kill me.” He turns his face up to her, eyes filled with more anger than fear. “If I am to die, let me understand why.”

“You say you want to understand.” She looks down upon him — how small he seems when he is like this — pinned as he is by the seals that Kon planted, led astray by his hubris.

For so long, he has been a paper tiger, about to lead the fire to the powder keg.

But like this, he is small and broken down, his masks shedded, no audience to brag or bluster for.

There is no stage here.

No play.

No places.

Only the two of them.

“So I will let you die with understanding.” She unfolds the letters so that he may see them, though he is able to do nothing with the knowledge. Let him know that the whole world will see his death in a softer light. “When there is a rot in the branch of a tree, you must remove the branch. When there is a rot in the root of a tree, you must tear out the root.”

_And you, Honored Father-in-Law, are the canker that will kill the whole tree._

His eyes are wide, breathing gone ragged.

But she is not done.

He is not dead, and her work shouldn’t be delayed.

But she is not done.

“If it hadn’t traveled to His Majesty’s ear, I would’ve let you live for another year or so. I am patient. I can wait.” And wait she has, for a man who likes drinking as much as he does could so easily drink himself into an early grave. “But someone else tipped my hand. You have her to thank for an earlier grave.”

For who would it be but a woman who calculated everything with such clear and ruthless cruelty?

Men might be cruel, but they take other paths.

Hashirama’s next closest sister who lived in Kamakura town with her merchant husband had come to visit her, and with soft words had described the cold ire from her husband’s acquaintances, reasons for cutting trade ties that were sparked by outrage and a fierce pride in their own roots.

Someone had been hurt, and it is not only Uchiha Izuna, though it looks that way on the surface.

Merchants do not claim kinship with the sons of Counts.

Nothing sparks the sort of cold ire that goes in the street now quite like the words and tears of a woman, someone who, because she is part of the inner world, ought never to have been hurt in the first place.

Another woman has sealed his doom. She is merely the messenger.

She has written that Senju Butsuma has seen the error of his ways, and that all blame is his own to bear.

Being misled by the late and disgraced Lord Orihito into a continuing line of crimes, he did not look back to see the shore until it was all but too late.

He asks for mercy for his clan and his children, both sons still such young men, too filial for their own good to disobey the orders he uttered and the path he had set them all on, daughters married and with struggles of their own that he has brought about.

He is too ashamed to see His Majesty, being unfit to grace the imperial presence. But since these are his crimes, he alone should bear it.

Ten thousand regrets.

Senju Butsuma.

He laughs then upon reading it, a hollow, ringing sound, with nothing in his chest but air.

Perhaps he’d already died, long ago.

She hands him his knife.

It falls, as it must.

* * *

She is in the middle of stamping the letters with the official Senju stamp and her father-in-law’s thumbprint when she feels the window draft and the intake of breath. Someone has opened the window and seen her standing over the corpse.

A senbon slips from her sleeve into her hand.

With a sigh, she turns, resolving to solve this problem quickly.

No one must ever suspect that Senju Butsuma was already dead before the letters were sent.

If that means another body, then so be it.

Her brother-in-law is crouched there, frozen with his bare feet upon the window ledge, long white hair tangled like a rat’s nest out of its topknot, shockingly muddy.

Her senbon returns to her sleeve. She has killed enough in-laws today. Tobirama’s untimely end would break her husband’s heart.

“Come in and close the window before someone sees you, Tobira-kun.”

Her words do prompt him to climb down, though he is still wordless, eyes trying to determine if she is a threat.

Warily, they eye each other, the corpse cooling between them.

Time is ticking.

She will have to speak fast.

“Be careful, Tobira-kun, that I am not the one who walked in here second.”

He is a reasonable young man, her brother-in-law. He has come to his own conclusions about this, as he must.

A choice, between life and death, and he with less attachment to morals knows the right answer.

Life or death.

Life or death.

Between Senju Butsuma’s frail, foreign daughter-in-law so somber and grave reporting his murder, and his filial shu son who always bore the brunt of his rage, well, the magistrate would know who murdered him, should it come to a moment before the magistrate.

Even filial men might break.

He takes another step forward, muddy water dripping from his ruined clothing onto the floor. “Mito-nee, _what—_ ”

He has the presence of mind for it to be a soft whisper at least.

Though Tanama-ji has done what he could to prevent people from getting into this part of the house, his plans had _not_ been fool proof.

Tobirama in the room proves that.

“If I finish, we all live. If I don’t, all of us will die.”

He does the math. It is frozen all over his face. Vengeance for his father’s murder — the honorable thing to do — or the lives of hundreds — the human thing to do.

He nods once curtly. “I won’t stop you.”

She makes short work of it.

* * *

By the time Hashirama returns, the letters are already stamped, sealed, and on their way to the capital.

He looks at her for a long moment, tired and sad, knowing, somehow, both what she had intended and what she has done.

But the brush of the back of his fingers against her cheek is warm, though he says nothing.

Tanama-ji is grave when presenting him with the white band to go in his hair that he has not worn since he was still a child, when his mother died. Beside him stands Tobirama, already dressed for mourning, his face grey like the ashes in the hearth.

There is much he cannot stomach of today.

But then, it was his father.

“How did it happen?” he asks, voice soft with the fatigue that only life could give him.

She did not realize it had already come to this for him, that one day, the boundless well of joy he carried with him despite all their suffering and sorrow could run so dry.

“He took his own life.” Tanama-ji covers his mouth with a hand, but continues onward. “Messenger birds headed towards the capital over an hour ago. Only then did we discover him.”

By then, his body had already cooled, and Tobirama’s footprints scrubbed away.

Hashirama nods woodenly. “As you say.”

And with calm words, face grave, he lays out what must be done for the funeral proceedings.

Something, here, has ended.

* * *

She pauses in the doorway to their bedroom, watches as he strips, cotton dachang sliding from his shoulders, thrown casually over a railing, his shenyi following suit.

The tanned skin cannot hide his scars, puckered skin a few shades lighter than the rest of him, the fruits of a lifetime living with his father, tripping in between Tobirama and whatever had been thrown at him this time.

A lifetime of carrying burdens.

But tonight, she fears for him.

“You offered him the knife,” he says without much preamble, slowly tugging off his boots.

“I believed in the spark of honor I saw in his letters.” So now he knows that she stole and looked at the writing his father had meant for few eyes to see.

And when a reply comes from His Majesty, he will not believe that his father was honorable in the slightest.

It would be kinder if he believed it. If she could lie to him.

But she loves him and cannot lie to him, not for the rest of their lives, however long or short.

“Why do you not come in?” He does not turn around, but he does pull the hair stick from his topknot, and it tumbles down over his shoulders, part of it tangled, but enough that it hides the worst of the scarring.

“Because I worry.”

He knows what had happened, knows why his father died, and perhaps he guesses that she killed him.

But even if he knows, he has not acted as though he did, playing the part of a mourning but dutiful son. A Taoist priest had been called, the proper rites observed, and he’d put on his mourning outfit, white, undyed cotton, white in his hair, burned the proper incense and paper money, said the proper words, comforted what must be comforted, and his face had been stone the whole time.

He had called the ghosts at mealtime, laid out a bowl for her father-in-law.

And here he is, with his back to her, his voice deceptively light.

There is no grief here.

No tears.

The man she married is not made of stone.

“What do you worry about?” His voice is still light.

No, it is not worry she feels right now.

It is fear.

“I worry that I have killed you.”

He turns around to look at her, something very measured and considering in his dark eyes. “Do you?” There is no blame here, anywhere in his voice or on his face. “I am not the one who has bled out today.”

“There is more than one way to die.”

Some things are more important than blood, and he has always carried his heart so unguardedly, tender despite the pain it brought him.

She sees none of that tonight.

He looks at her, still without blame or anger, no trace of grief or suffering, and with a sigh, takes the three steps it would take to cross the room and pulls her in. “Mito-love,” he says against her hair, arms around her. His throat is open to her, so trusting of him, still, when he knows what she has done. “You so rarely think of me as the fool. Why start now?”

“What I did was not kind or good.” There is a special word they use for her kind in Water Country, subject to scorn and derision. She is not as immune to words as she wishes to appear. “You have the grounds to divorce me now.”

The words are sharp in the quiet, rending the fabric of their life.

“You were the one to tell me that you would rather hold my hand.” He tilts her face up towards her, cupping her face, fingers lingering under her chin. “Will you leave me now, after the danger has passed?”

She blinks, suddenly filled with an onslaught of tears. “But you know what sort of woman I am now.” She has lived her entire life careful to keep her sharp edges hidden, unable to trust anyone except her father with more than her silhouette, and when she had married a gentle man, she thought she had bargained those edges away.

But an ocean cannot fit inside a puddle.

A tigress cannot be a housecat.

And what is hidden must always come to light.

“I have always known.” There is no judgement here, no scorn or horror. “And I have loved you for it, the best that I am able.”

And that is more than enough.

* * *

It is no more than a week or so later when she and Hashirama call upon the House of Kawaguchi. He reaches up to help her down from the carriage, and while the two almost identical young men at the gate glare fiercely, one moves to open the gate, and the other mutters a few words to give directions.

The first courtyard just beyond the front door is laid out differently than her husband’s household, several paths splitting off into different directions, through the garden, each one leading to a doorway and a different space beyond.

But Hashirama knows the way, his arm around her waist as they travel through the space, lacquered engawa of dark wood polished until they shone, oil paper sealing the doors and windows against the chill, red flower lanterns snuffed out in the daytime, the sound of trickling water, a koi pond, a thicket of bamboo, until they are well inside the house.

At the edge of the courtyard that is their destination stands a handmaid, roughly in her early twenties, tall and willowy, sweeping the path, dressed in a high waisted outfit of pale green silks, embroidered with tiny birds.

There is no dust or debris upon the path, so this must be the first line of defense.

The handmaid raises her head, a prominent burn scar cutting an angry red mark over the right side of her face, all the more shocking because Mito is certain that this household is civilian to the core. “State your business for needing to see Hisa.” Her voice is sharp, and despite the prominence of her scarring, her pride is evident in the taut line of her lips.

“We are here to see Kawaguchi-san,” Mito says, still wondering what to make of this protective behavior, “as her guests.”

Another handmaid, this one no older than her late teens, hurries out of the building. “Aka, Hisa said that she would see guests today.”

How curious that they would use their miss’s name and nothing else when speaking of her.

In another household, it might speak of disrespect.

But in this one, it seems only to speak of fondness.

“What do you know?” Aka asks the other handmaid. “Maybe Hisa has changed her mind. She’s with the Countess right now.” _The Uchiha Countess?_

_Who else?_

Uchiha Izuna is still at the Kawaguchi Residence.

“Hisa says that she will see you.” A third handmaid appears from the building, this one better dressed than either of the other two. _A personal servant, closer to her miss than all others._ “In the inner courtyard.”

The merchant woman sitting with tea at the bluestone table in the wide airy courtyard has hair as dark and soft as ground ink upon the inkstone, but it is her eyes that sharpen Mito’s heart to a blade.

The other woman has eyes the color of sea glass — Water Country eyes. Where a merchant from the south of Fire Country found a daughter with Water Country eyes, Mito does not know, but she pauses, watching as the merchant woman excuses herself from her conversation partner — certainly no Uchiha, though the handmaids had called her a countess — and rises to welcome guests.

“Senju-san,” the merchant woman dips into a curtsy for Hashirama, her round fan covering the bottom half of her face, eyes guarded. “And?”

“My beloved wife,” Hashirama says, beaming, unaware of the danger. “Uzumaki Mito.”

* * *

“What was in our stars

That destined us for sorrow?”

— Anna Akhmatova, “Cinque”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a double update day! Chapter 19 of A Bolt of Silk is also up! Mito's POV is something I've wanted to write about for a while now, just because I find it so interesting how she and Hisa are both so similar but also extremely different.
> 
> Thank you so much again everyone! I'll see you all next week.
> 
> ~Tav (Leaf)


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